The Analysis Of High Purity Noble Metals And Their Salts By Icp Ms

Ongoing work is being carried out at Mintek to establish methods for the determination of trace levels of impurities in high-purity noble metals and their salts. The sample-preparation methods are outlined, and the optimum instrumental parameters that were established are tabulated. Spectral interferences arising from the presence of a matrix element at high concentration levels, including abundance sensitivity overlap and the formation of noble metal oxides, are discussed. Accuracy was established by the comparison of the results with those obtained by a DC-arc method, and by spike recovery tests. The precision of measurement was found to vary from 0.72 to 49% relative standard deviation for concentrations of between 15 and 0.5 ug/g, respectively.